French developer MXP4 says they want you to "play with your music." They just launched Bopler Games, a set of classic games on Facebook with an added musical slant. To play, choose a song from the Bopler library, (which features an inordinate amount of 80s pop) choose a game, and go. The kicker is that each of the games automatically syncs to the beat of your chosen song, creating a potentially exponential growing set of variation. Shmup enemies dance to the beat, Tetris blocks drop at different speeds depending on the speed of the song, etc. At the moment, there are four games available, including versions Tetris and Snake, with six more on the way.

In true Facebook gaming fashion, Bopler uses a microtransaction-based formula. Players try any of the games with a clip from a regular song from their library three times a day. If you want to play more than that, or play a game using the same song more than once, you have to buy a "Pass" that grants you unlimited access to a song. Passes can either be bought with "cash" paid for with a credit card or Facebook credits, or "Coins", which are earned... Or bought with a credit card or Facebook credits. Players can also buy point-multiplying bonuses just before the start of a round.

With Guitar Hero in limbo and Harmonix's next project still waiting in the wings, the fact that this game is out there, adapting to the gaming landscape and, for better or worse, thriving makes it an exception to the popular notion that the music genre is on the way out. Before dismissing the game as "doomed to fail", take into the account the fact that the studio's first game, Pump It, was released before the Bopler consortium and grabbed over one million hits in its first month. The question is; will this type of innovation help resuscitate the relationship between music and gaming? [Bopler Games] via [TechCrunch]